“Danny Kaye Loves Lucy, Wants All To Know It”
Times Daily – Nov. 9, 1962
By: Cynthia Lowry
AP Television-
NEW YORK (AP)—A great big comedians’ love-
Kaye, the blond pixie, flew into town this week for some business conferences and was more interested in talking about Miss Ball’s talents than about his own forthcoming venture into weekly television.
“She is,” he declared with gestures, “the most gifted, the most inventive, the most professional in the business.”
They worked together for the first time recently, making the special which will be seen on NBC – in color so that Lucy’s flaming locks will be highly visible – on Sunday night.
“The strange thing is,” confided Kaye, “that we work in opposite ways, but we both arrive at the same destination by different routes.”
“Lucy wants to know in detail exactly what she is expected to do, how she is expected to do it and what she is to say. And then, once that is all established, she cuts loose and it’s wild. We got along swell.”
Kaye says that his approach—when he’s playing to an audience—is more often a spontaneous one. Recently he did 40 minutes before a British audience with the aid of a hunter’s horn he grabbed, on the spur of the minute, from a musician in the pit.
Sunday’s show, Kaye says, involves singing, dancing and some sketches. Lucy was particularly concerned about knowing the song words and the dance steps in advance.
“I believe that it’s tougher to do one show a year than to do a weekly show,” Kaye said. “The audience expects so very much if you only do an occasional show. If you’re on every week, the audience knows that while some of the programs will be very good, there have to be others that will be just passable and even not so good. But they go along with you.”